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Henry James's family tried to keep him in the closet (2016)

After Henry James’s death 100 years ago, his relatives were at pains to remove any hints of his sexuality from his letters and biography

James’s friends in London also became alert to how little his family actually knew about him, and how uneasy they might become at discovering in his letters what Anesko calls “his most distinctive qualities: his devastating sharpness of wit, his extravagant inventions of intimacy, his Rabelasian powers of innuendo”. I hang over a green garden and a blue sea from a big balcony… There would be room on the balcony even for your inches or cigarettes, even for Apollo’s lips” or “I am divided between 2 sensations – panting for to-morrow pm and blushing for all the hours of the past days.” Thus James’s artistry, his skill at creating scenes and drama, his sly sexuality, his wonderful prose style, his genius with form and tone and structure, make him a subject of fascination not only for ordinary readers but also for students and teachers of literature, and indeed for many, if not all, of the novelists who have come after him.

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